I walked down the high street, swinging a carrier bag containing soap and a bottle of rose water. I passed the 24-hour grocery, the turning for the library and the derelict police station. I stopped when I got to the alley at the corner of the mosque. That's where I saw the wooden coffin. When I answered the phone call to tell us that Umma, as we called our mother in Bengali, had left us, and later that same night saw her lying still like a ragdoll in the hospital ward, I couldn't grasp that it was real. But seeing that box confirmed she was really gone.

The burial was almost immediate. Within hours I was at the register office recording Umma's death to get the certificate we needed to release her body. At home, my sisters were collating every teacup and saucer she had ever bought, for the well-wishers who were flooding our house with prayers.

Death was normal. My parents would regularly receive blue aerogrammes from Bangladesh informing them that a relative had died, prompting Umma to wax philosophical. In between teaching us to cook and showing us how to fold samosas, using the backs of envelopes to represent the pastry, she talked about God; how he created the world and decided when people came into it and when they left. Every year she observed an occasion called Shab-e-Barat, which she believed was when God decided the day we would all die and which involved praying all night to ask forgiveness.

We knew about the concept of heaven and hell and were warned that when a parent dies, their children's prayers are the most important ones. Although a whole village in Bangladesh spent three days reading prayers for Umma, ours would have most impact.

Packed away in a suitcase in my parents' bedroom was the white shroud that Umma was to be buried in. It had been washed in holy water from Mecca, for when the time came. She had been so busy talking about death and reminding us where to find the fabric that she never had a chance to explain to me and my three sisters that as her daughters we had duties after her death.

I had never thought about what happened to a dead person but now I was standing in a tiny washroom, with a sink, a table and the pale body of my mother. Her eyes were closed and there was a cut on her arm that was bleeding. I didn't know dead people could bleed.

In Islam it is a daughter's duty to wash her mother and prepare her for the afterlife; boys attend to deceased fathers. Having never attended a funeral, I didn't know what this involved. I soon discovered it wasn't an elaborate bathe, but a wash down with sponges, towels, buckets of water and the bar of soap from my carrier bag.

There were two elder women in charge who directed us where and how to clean her. Umma's body was warmer than I expected, her face as delicate as I had last seen her. Throughout my teens she'd smothered me in cream – Nivea, Pond's and Astral – to preserve my beauty. She showed no signs of ageing but she was only 53.

Momtaz Begum-Hossain's mother, Rehana Begum, in 1971, aged 20 PR

Umma was so devoted to her religion that I sensed she would be proud her daughters were taking part in such a symbolic ritual. As her limbs were lifted and we took it in turns to scrub her, it seemed as if her expressions were changing. She was a puppet, being moved, bent over, turned from side to side. I didn't know it was possible to get this close to a dead person, let alone share in the most intimate experience their body would ever go through. She was washed an odd number of times. I can't remember which number we settled on, just that the procedure was repeated until we were tired.

Afterwards she was dried with towels and scented with rose water. The room was suffused with the fragrance of Turkish delight, though she never wore perfume. Her beauty regime consisted of applying hair oil and moisturiser. I never saw her wear makeup and she had the smallest wardrobe of anyone I've ever known; just a handful of saris and blouses and petticoats she had made herself. Just as she had led a modest life, so it was for her funeral.

Umma's hair was combed and plaited and her body wrapped in the white fabric that Ubba, my father, had brought back from Mecca. Then came the most difficult part, lifting her body into the coffin. The limp and lifeless nature of a dead body is unlike one that is alive; it looks normal, but behaves so differently. The same hands of a seamstress who once spent the best part of her life on a sewing machine, cooking fresh meals twice a day, growing marrows in the garden, collecting four daughters from school and ensuring her husband's beard was always trimmed to perfection now dangled and would never work again.

When she was wrapped and laid to rest we anointed her with more rose water. An hour later we followed a procession of cars that took her to a newly opened Muslim burial ground. I hand-painted a plaque with my mother's name and dates of birth and death, while my sisters edged the spot with a small plastic fence from a garden centre. Ubba marked the spot with twigs.

I haven't recalled my mother's funeral until now. Ten years on from the day Umma died, I can now go back and revisit the visions and emotions of a day that back then seemed surreal, but now I reminisce over it all as a special memory.

Not everyone has a chance to say goodbye properly to someone they love, but I did more than that.

Follow Momtaz @TheCraftCafe. Her book, 101+ Things To Do With Glitter, is published by Vivays